On Wed, Oct 26, 2005 at 02:45:24PM -0400, Bruce Dawson wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > I'd recommend sending this to the -org list so they can comment on it. > > - --Bruce > > Jeff Kinz wrote: > |After one morning of checking rejecting non-member submitted spam > |I can see that this will get annoying over time.
Note: Although this refers to the gnhlug-org list, it also be applied to the "discuss" list as well. > | > |I didn't realize that the list was getting many spam attempts. > |(Stupid of me, spam is pervasive.) > | > |It would be easier if we could moderate via email only. I perused the > |code for mailman 2.0.13 and 2.1.5 (the latest) and some of the code is > |there to support this but its not done yet. > | > |I have an idea than can help reduce the amount of human intervention > |needed. No code changes are needed in the mailman GNHLUG is running. > | > |The basic idea is: > | > | reject all non member emails > | > | rejection message tells submitter to resend their messages to > | "[EMAIL PROTECTED]". This inherently acts as a first level filter > | since most of the from addresses are bogus. Note: the e-mail address does not have to be at kinz.org. That mail alias is already set up and working in the fashion described below: I'm sure that the the same could be set up anywhere it is desired, but will require an integrated/plug-in spam filtering capability and mail forwarding system plus a database trained on a decent sized population of spam and non spam examples. > | > | The email user "gnhmod" filters emails through a Bayesian spam > | filter and if the message passes that check, will be sent on to > | one of two places: (You decide) > | > | 1: Automatically submitted to the discuss list with a > | note at the top indicating it was a moderated > | message > | > | 2: forwarded to a human(s) for a final check before > | being allowed in. > | > |I have written and tested the scripting to do this already. CHANGES to existing mailman system: > |We would need to change the mailman configuration to reject all > |non-members messages and change the template text being sent out in the > |rejection message to indicate what email address to submit the message > |to. ANALYSIS: there are at least two drawbacks to the system: 1. The rejection messages will be sent to the from address contained in the original e-mail. Most of those addresses will not exist or will have been forged. This will cause some innocent people to receive messages that say an e-mail they never sent has been rejected, and the GNHLUG e-mail server will get more "undeliverable e-mail" messages. 2. The humans in the chain will have to forward the e-mails which get past the spam filters to the e-mail list manually. This isn't hard of course, a mutt macro, or a procmail recipe can reduce the work involved to a single keypress or two. So far it looks like only a few of these will exist per month. 3. this one isn't a drawback, but is a response to a potentially perceived drawback. False positives. It is a valid concern that any spam filtering system may potentially identify a non spam e-mail as a piece of spam. My current system, which is built on bogofilter, has had no false positives for many months. I am a little conservative. My system does currently let some spam through, on the order of two or three a week. However the idea above can use any spam filtering system desired including the ever popular Spam-Assassin. The best part about this is that only e-mails from people who are not members of the e-mail list will be scanned for spam content. Since there are only a few of these this will not add any appreciable amount to the load on the system. -- Jeff Kinz, Emergent Research, Hudson, MA. speech recognition software used to create this e-mail _______________________________________________ gnhlug-org mailing list gnhlug-org@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-org